By Joanna Weinstein/Syracuse University in Florence
De Chirico exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi
After seeing endless signs along every street corner about 5 times a day that read “DE CHIRICO” in bold and a few other names underneath that meant absolutely nothing to me, I decided maybe it would be a good idea to check this exhibit out. Or maybe I went because I kept hearing how amazing this exhibit was from a hand full of people that didn’t fall into the art history major category, but I still went. I strolled into the center one Thursday afternoon behind Piazza Republica past the lovely Odeon theatre to the wonderful Palazzo Strozzi.
I made my way to the ticket booth and was pleasantly surprised that everyone spoke English. Well, scratch that. I wasn’t so surprised. I guess I was just a bit relieved because I always fail to say biglietto with the proper pronunciation, and it comes out sounding like ‘baguette’ and like I’m asking for bread in a museum is just embarrassing. So I suppose it’s nice to have an English speaking staff at such a famous exhibit and exhibition space. On the other hand, it can be frustrating for the student studying here that attempts to sepak the native language, only to be answered by their own language. But I guess that’s tourism.
Anyway, after getting a lovely, little 50 euro cent student discount, I made my way upstairs. Sometimes it really bothers me that we have to pay to see beauty, but again, that’s tourism. I’ll rant about it some other time.
I was with a friend, who fortunately for me, was an art history major. She briefly told me who De Chirico was and why he is famous. “You can see anxiety and fear in his work. You never know where the shadows are coming from, and everything seems like it’s from another world,” she said. She then went on in more detail about what she had studied about these artists, but my mind focused on one thing: how can you see anxiety in art?
Well, not only did I see anxiety, but I felt it. I walked through about five to six different rooms, each filled with paintings that simultaneously horrified me and intrigued me. Aside from the many mannequins, the two that stuck out to me were paintings of Santa Croce and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. De Chirico’s Santa Croce was no other than an eerie, brown building that stood behind a distorted headless statue of Dante, while Pisa was an elaborate almost 3-dimensional leaning tower of dark electric blues and browns. I probably wouldn’t have even recognized Santa Croce if I was not studying here, nor would I have been so fascinated by this version of the Leaning Tower.
I then began reading the text that explained each piece of art and noticed many of these paintings came from the MOMA in New York. A New York native myself, I began to laugh. It took me thousands of miles, an entirely new city on an entirely different continent to see these works when just last year they were about a 30 minutes away from me. But I soon realized that the person I was last year wouldn’t have even cared.
The pamphlet of the exhibit tells us that the choice of Florence as the venue is because it was Florence, in 1909, that the young De Chirico “had his first intuition and metaphysical ‘exeprience’”. Of course at age 21, Florence has not given me any intuition to become an inspiring artist for the 21st century; however, what it has given me is appreciation. I never really cared about art until I came here. I remember walking past the Natural History Museum of Art in the city, checking out the works of Native American Indians for about 5 minutes, seeing some Egyptian pyramid replicas, some walrus statues, and rushing out. Of course I was only about 13 years old, but I had little desire to go back. And yes, I’ll admit, I still have not been to MOMA—pathetic I know. But I think for most of us “not so artsy people,” you come to Florence and see museums or exhibits like De Chirico and can’t help but stare. Sure, maybe you’ll see Jesus Christ’s crucifixion a bit too many times in the Uffizi, but then you realize how much you’ve come to understand once you see an exhibit like this one in Palazzo Strozzi’s , and have a wide range of art to compare it too.
I even found myself thrilled for the first time in my life to see such detailed descriptions (in English!) of the artworks because, for once, I actually cared about why De Chirico painted a brown, dark Santa Croce, or three mannequins with pointy knees and missing elbows to symbolize the enigma of life and the human mind. And I think we care so much, despite our lack of knowledge of the content, because of the history of it. Knowing that you are walking along the same streets as Michelangelo, Ghiberti, Giotto and Da Vinci once did, is simply mind blowing. And then to see a more modern artist like De Chirico have an entire exhibit on metaphysical art, we American students immediately appreciate it because it’s in Florence—so we think, “it must be important.”
It’s as if Florence places you in a time warp for four or five months where all you notice is art, and the beauty of art, even if the art happens to depict a sort of anxiety or fear when you first lay your eyes on it. And that is what makes this exhibit among others different from those in America—the history behind it. It allows you to feel a part of this history because you find yourself in the same town that inspired the artists whose work you are staring at for hours at a time.
But maybe this can have the same effect for me in New York with respect to modern artists, including the ones inspired by New York City. I think maybe now I can appreciate art everywhere, despite its location. The art may lose its touch once I hear honking of horns, rather than vespa engines outside the window, but it’s worth a try. I think I’ll make a trip to the MOMA this summer after all.
